The Ilium Obligation (A Matt Savage Adventure) Chapter 45

[seymoure]

The Case for Blood

 

“We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion.

The great task in life is to find reality.”
-Iris Murdoch

 

We got back to the office, picked up the mail, and just then Gerald called to check in.

“Mr. Savage, the results on the tests on your box should be coming in the next few minutes,” he told me.

“We are going to get a bit of lunch,” I said, “so we’ll stop by there on the way back to the office.”

We then went out for a celebratory snack.

The world knows that barbeque ribs and red cream soda has no equal in the service of celebration. There have been times when champagne was advanced as the perfect way to make merry, popping the cork in the way of expressing joy. But for me, all the money in the world doesn’t buy a greater way to let the universe know you’ve succeeded than ribs and red cream soda.

While we were there we went through the mail. We got a notice that our computer was still being held up in shipping. This took a bit of the fun out of the whole thing for Rayleen. She was looking forward to bringing us into the future with detective work done with the latest advances. I assured her that as soon as we could have the device, it would be put into full use. I think she sometimes felt that I was dragging my heels, but such was not the case, even though I could understand her thought.

We also got the final estimate of repairs to our place of business. If insurance hadn’t been in place, I might have lost my nice lunch.

Then I opened the sack of mail (duplicates of evidence authorized by Rusty) from the New York investigators.

My barbecued ribs did not get in the way of my study of the copies of crime scene photos.

I am nothing if not thorough. Those photos didn’t show their gold immediately. But on the second time around, I found a most disconcerting inconsistency.

I checked it again. Then I had Rayleen and Hugo both look, and they agreed with what I saw.

We were going to have to change our agenda for the day. I feared that Gerald would have to wait for a bit.

We left quickly and went to the airport. We got a list of rental cars leased for people arriving by plane from both New York and Washington in the last week.

I also requested that they track down the names of cars that had been driven from those cities and dropped off in Kansas City. They told me they would get back to me with that in an hour or two.

Rayleen let me know that THEY had computers. We could work just as efficiently if WE had our computer.

I agreed and reminded her that it was on the way.

Then we stopped by to see Gerald, only two hours late. He didn’t seem to mind, but I apologized anyway.

“What can you tell me?” I asked as I passed the note to Rayleen to hold. “Whose blood was it written with?”

“I would have to know the chicken personally to be able to tell you,” he told me, looking over his glasses at me.

My flabbergasted face cued him to go on, “It’s not human blood. It is chicken blood.”

“All of it?” I asked. “The box and the note?”

“Yeah,” he said.  Then he held up the box. “And the postmark is from Raytown, but they used a plastic covering that they hoped would make the postmark fade quickly. I had to chemically bring it back out to read it.”

“It came from a Post Office just outside of Kansas City?”

“Yep.”

“Boss?” Rayleen said.

“Yeah,” I turned to see her holding out the note to me, “What is it?”

“The letters . . . written in blood?” she ventured.

“Uh-huh?”

“What do you notice?” she smiled.

“What?”

“They are bold, not as shaky as you would expect a terrified hostage to be,” she extended it again.

She was absolutely right. There was no hesitation in the word as all. “HELP!” was written by someone who wasn’t worried about getting help. Even the exclamation point was done solidly.

Curiouser and curiouser.

© C. Wayne Owens
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